Start an Organic Fruit Orchard for Food Independence

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Illustration By MOTHER EARTH NEWS staff

Ah, the vicissitudes of time. Two years ago, when there were NO currently relevant small-scale-farming introductory handbooks available, many of us welcomed the publication of Richard Langer’s Grow It! with open arms. Now that we’re all older and more experienced, however, some folks find it increasingly easy to criticize that breakthrough beginner’s guide which brings us to another breakthrough book that is just as important (probably more so) now as Grow It! was two years ago — and which may well come up for its share of criticism in another 24 months or so. Be that as it may, John and Sally Seymour’s record of 18 successful years on a shirttail-sized homestead in England is important now and should offer welcome encouragement to today’s back-to-the-landers — both real and imaginary. 

Fruit and Nuts

“A man who refuses apple dumpling cannot have a pure mind.” — Coleridge

It is one of the many disadvantages of the landlord and tenant system that there are so few fruit trees in English cottage gardens. No landlord is going to plant trees for his tenants, and no tenant is going to plant trees for his landlord. “No man,” wrote that great prophet of the soil, Philip Oyler, “unless he is a saint, can be expected to give the land the same care (the care it needs) if he is a tenant or an employee as he would as an owner.” That is so obvious that one would not think it necessary for anybody to say it, but it is necessary. He also wrote: “We should accept it as fundamental that each individual has a right to a plot of the earth on which he was born to as much as he and his family can farm well.”

  • Published on Jan 1, 1976
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